deliberation, these amazing seeds thrust a rootlet downward to the earthand a queer little bundle-like bud into the air. In a little while thewhole slope was dotted with minute plantlets standing at attention in theblaze of the sun.

They did not stand for long. The bundle-like buds swelled and strained andopened with a jerk, thrusting out a coronet of little sharp tips,spreading a whorl of tiny, spiky, brownish leaves, that lengthenedrapidly, lengthened visibly even as we watched. The movement was slowerthan any animal's, swifter than any plant's I have ever seen before. Howcan I suggest it to you - the way that growth went on? The leaf tips grewso that they moved onward even while we looked at them. The brownseed-case shrivelled and was absorbed with an equal rapidity. Have youever on a cold day taken a thermometer into your warm hand and watched thelittle thread of mercury creep up the tube? These moon plants grew likethat.

In a few minutes, as it seemed, the buds of the more forward of theseplants had lengthened into a stem and were even putting forth a secondwhorl of leaves, and all the slope that had seemed so recently a lifelessstretch of litter was now dark with the stunted olive-green herbage ofbristling spikes that swayed with the vigour of their growing.

I turned about, and behold! along the upper edge of a rock to the eastwarda similar fringe in a scarcely less forward condition swayed and bent,dark against the blinding glare of the sun. And beyond this fringe was thesilhouette of a plant mass, branching clumsily like a cactus, and swellingvisibly, swelling like a bladder that fills with air.

Then to the westward also I discovered that another such distended formwas rising over the scrub. But here the light fell upon its sleek sides,and I could see that its colour was a vivid orange hue It rose as onewatched it; if one looked away from it for a minute and then back, itsoutline had changed; it thrust out blunt congested branches until in alittle time it rose a coralline shape of many feet in height. Comparedwith such a growth the terrestrial puff-ball, which will sometimes swell afoot in diameter in a single night, would be a hopeless laggard. But thenthe puff-ball grows against a gravitational pull six times that of themoon. Beyond, out of gullies and flats that had been hidden from us, butnot from the quickening sun, over reefs and banks of shining rock, abristling beard of spiky and fleshy vegetation was straining into view,hurrying tumultuously to tale advantage of the brief day in which it mustflower and fruit and seed again and die. It was like a miracle, thatgrowth. So, one must imagine, the trees and plants arose at the Creationand covered the desolation of the new-made earth.

Imagine it; Imagine that dawn! The resurrection of the frozen air, thestirring and quickening of the soil, and then this silent uprising ofvegetation, this unearthly ascent of fleshiness and spikes. Conceive itall lit by a blaze that would make the intensest sunlight of earth seemwatery and weak. And still around this stirring jungle, wherever there wasshadow, lingered banks of bluish snow. And to have the picture of ourimpression complete, you must bear in mind that we saw it all through athick bent glass, distorting it as things are distorted by a lens, acuteonly in the centre of the picture, and very bright there, and towards theedges magnified and unreal.

Chapter 9

Prospecting Begins

WE ceased to gaze. We turned to each other, the same thought, the samequestion in our eyes. For these plants to grow, there must be some air,however attenuated, air that we also should be able to breathe.

"The manhole?" I said.

"Yes!" said Cavor, "if it is air we see!"

"In a little while," I said, "these plants will be as high as we are.Suppose - suppose after all - Is it certain? How do you know that stuffis air? It may be nitrogen - it may be carbonic acid even!"

"That's easy," he said, and set about proving it. He produced a big pieceof crumpled paper from the bale, lit it, and thrust it hastily through theman-hole valve. I bent forward and peered down through the thick glass forits appearance outside, that little flame on whose evidence depended somuch!

I saw the paper drop out and lie lightly upon the snow. The pink flame ofits burning vanished. For an instant it seemed to be extinguished. Andthen I saw a little blue tongue upon the edge of it that trembled, andcrept, and spread!

Quietly the whole sheet, save where it lay in Immediate contact with thesnow, charred and shrivelled and sent up a quivering thread of smoke.There was no doubt left to me; the atmosphere of the moon was either pureoxygen or air, and capable therefore - unless its tenuity was excessive -of supporting our alien life. We might emerge - and live!

I sat down with my legs on either side of the manhole and prepared tounscrew it, but Cavor stopped me. "There is first a little precaution," hesaid. He pointed out that although it was certainly an oxygenatedatmosphere outside, it might still be so rarefied as to cause us graveinjury. He reminded me of mountain sickness, and of the bleeding thatoften afflicts aeronauts who have ascended too swiftly, and he spent sometime in the preparation of a sickly-tasting drink which he insisted on mysharing. It made me feel a little numb, but otherwise had no effect on me.Then he permitted me to begin unscrewing.

Presently the glass stopper of the manhole was so far undone that thedenser air within our sphere began to escape along the thread of thescrew, singing as a kettle sings before it boils. Thereupon he made medesist. It speedily became evident that the pressure outside was very muchless than it was within. How much less it was we had no means of telling.

I sat grasping the stopper with both hands, ready to close it again if, inspite of our intense hope, the lunar atmosphere should after all prove toorarefied for us, and Cavor sat with a cylinder of compressed oxygen athand to restore our pressure. We looked at one another in silence, andthen at the fantastic vegetation that swayed and grew visibly andnoiselessly without. And ever that shrill piping continued.

My blood-vessels began to throb in my ears, and the sound of Cavor'smovements diminished. I noted how still everything had become, because ofthe thinning of the air.

As our air sizzled out from the screw the moisture of it condensed inlittle puffs.

Presently I experienced a peculiar shortness of breath that lasted indeedduring the whole of the time of our exposure to the moon's exterioratmosphere, and a rather unpleasant sensation about the ears andfinger-nails and the back of the throat grew upon my attention, andpresently passed off again.

But then came vertigo and nausea that abruptly changed the quality of mycourage. I gave the lid of the manhole half a turn and made a hastyexplanation to Cavor; but now he was the more sanguine. He answered me ina voice that seemed extraordinarily small and remote, because of thethinness of the air that carried the sound. He recommended a nip ofbrandy, and set me the example, and presently I felt better. I turned themanhole stopper back again. The throbbing in my ears grew louder, and thenI remarked that the piping note of the outrush had ceased. For a time Icould not be sure that it had ceased.

"Well?" said Cavor, in the ghost of a voice.

"Well?" said I.

"Shall we go on?"

I thought. "Is this all?"

"If you can stand it."

By way of answer I went on unscrewing. I lifted the circular operculumfrom its place and laid it carefully on the bale. A flake or so of snowwhirled and vanished as that thin and unfamiliar air took possession ofour sphere. I knelt, and then seated myself at the edge of the manhole,peering over it. Beneath, within a yard of my face, lay the untrodden snowof the moon.

There came a little pause. Our eyes met.

"It doesn't distress your lungs too much?" said Cavor.

"No," I said. "I can stand this."

He stretched out his hand for his blanket, thrust his head through itscentral hole, and wrapped it about him. He sat down on the edge of themanhole, he let his feet drop until they were within six inches of thelunar ground. He hesitated for a moment, then thrust himself forward,dropped these intervening inches, and stood upon the untrodden soil of themoon.

As he stepped forward lie was refracted grotesquely by the edge of theglass. He stood for a moment looking this way and that. Then he drewhimself together and leapt.

The glass distorted everything, but it seemed to me even then to be anextremely big leap. He had at one bound become remote. He seemed twenty orthirty feet off. He was standing high upon a rocky mass and gesticulatingback to me. Perhaps he was shouting - but the sound did not reach me. Buthow the deuce had he done this? I felt like a man who has just seen a newconjuring trick.

In a puzzled state of mind I too dropped through the manhole. I stood up.Just in front of me the snowdrift had fallen away and made a sort ofditch. I made a step and jumped.

I found myself flying through the air, saw the rock on which he stoodcoming to meet me, clutched it and clung in a state of infinite amazement.

I gasped a painful laugh. I was tremendously confused. Cavor bent downarid shouted in piping tones for me to be careful.

I had forgotten that on the moon, with only an eighth part of the earth'smass and a quarter of its diameter, my weight was barely a sixth what itwas on earth. But now that fact insisted on being remembered.

"We are out of Mother Earth's leading - strings now," he said.

With a guarded effort I raised myself to the top, and moving as cautiouslyas a rheumatic patient, stood up beside him under the blaze of the sun.The sphere lay behind us on its dwindling snowdrift thirty feet away.

As far as the eye could see over the enormous disorder of rocks thatformed the crater floor, the same bristling scrub that surrounded us wasstarting into life, diversified here and there by bulging masses of acactus form, and scarlet and purple lichens that grew so fast they seemedto crawl over the rocks. The whole area of the crater seemed to me then tobe one similar wilderness up to the very foot of the surrounding cliff.

This cliff was apparently bare of vegetation save at its base, and withbuttresses and terraces and platforms that did not very greatly attractour attention at the time. It was many miles away from us in everydirection, we seemed to be almost at the centre of the crater, and we sawit through a certain haziness that drove before the wind. For there waseven a wind now in the thin air, a swift yet weak wind that chilledexceedingly but exerted little pressure. It was blowing I round thecrater, as it seemed, to the hot illuminated side from the foggy darknessunder the sunward wall. It was difficult to look into this eastward fog;we had to peer with half-closed eyes beneath the shade of our hands,because of the fierce intensity of the motionless sun.

"It seems to be deserted," said Cavor, "absolutely desolate."

I looked about me again. I retained even then a clinging hope of somequasi-human evidence, some pinnacle of building, some house or engine, buteverywhere one looked spread the tumbled rocks in peaks and crests, andthe darting scrub and those bulging cacti that swelled and swelled, a flatnegation as it seemed of all such hope.

"It looks as though these plants had it to themselves," I said. " I see notrace of any other creature."

"No insects - no birds, no! Not a trace, not a scrap nor particle ofanimal life. If there was - what would they do in the night? ... No;there's just these plants alone."

I shaded my eyes with my hand. "It's like the landscape of a dream. Thesethings are less like earthly land plants than the things one imaginesamong the rocks at the bottom of the sea. Look at that yonder! One mightimagine it a lizard changed into a plant. And the glare! "

"This is only the fresh morning," said Cavor.

He sighed and looked about him. "This is no world for men," he said. "Andyet in a way - it appeals."

He became silent for a time, then commenced his meditative humming.

I started at a gentle touch, and found a thin sheet of livid lichenlapping over my shoe. I kicked at it and it fell to powder, and each speckbegan to grow.

I heard Cavor exclaim sharply, and perceived that one of the fixedbayonets of the scrub had pricked him. He hesitated, his eyes soughtamong the rocks about us. A sudden blaze of pink had crept up a raggedpillar of crag. It was a most extraordinary pink, a livid magenta.

"Look!" said I, turning, and behold Cavor had vanished.

For an instant I stood transfixed. Then I made a hasty step to look overthe verge of the rock. But in my surprise at his disappearance I forgotonce more that we were on the moon. The thrust of my foot that I made instriding would have carried me a yard on earth; on the moon it carried mesix - a good five yards over the edge. For the moment the thing hadsomething of the effect of those nightmares when one falls and falls. Forwhile one falls sixteen feet in the first second of a fall on earth, onthe moon one falls two, and with only a sixth of one's weight. I fell, orrather I jumped down, about ten yards I suppose. It seemed to take quite along time, five or six seconds, I should think. I floated through the airand fell like a feather, knee-deep in a snow-drift in the bottom of agully of blue-gray, white-veined rock.

I looked about me. "Cavor!" I cried; but no Cavor was visible.

"Cavor!" I cried louder, and the rocks echoed me.

I turned fiercely to the rocks and clambered to the summit of them."Cavor!" I cried. My voice sounded like the voice of a lost lamb.

The sphere, too, was not in sight, and for a moment a horrible feeling ofdesolation pinched my heart.

Then I saw him. He was laughing and gesticulating to attract my attention.He was on a bare patch of rock twenty or thirty yards away. I could nothear his voice, but "jump" said his gestures. I hesitated, the distanceseemed enormous. Yet I reflected that surely I must be able to clear agreater distance than Cavor.

I made a step back, gathered myself together, and leapt with all my might.I seemed to shoot right up in the air as though I should never come down.

It was horrible and delightful, and as wild as a nightmare, to go flyingoff in this fashion. I realised my leap had been altogether too violent. Iflew clean over Cavor's head and beheld a spiky confusion in a gullyspreading to meet my fall. I gave a yelp of alarm. I put out my hands andstraightened my legs.

I hit a huge fungoid bulk that burst all about me, scattering a mass oforange spores in every direction, and covering me with orange powder. Irolled over spluttering, and came to rest convulsed with breathlesslaughter.

I became aware of Cavor's little round face peering over a bristlinghedge. He shouted some faded inquiry. "Eh?" I tried to shout, but couldnot do so for want of breath. He made his way towards me, coming gingerlyamong the bushes.

"We've got to be careful," he said. "This moon has no discipline. She'lllet us smash ourselves."

He helped me to my feet. "You exerted yourself too much," he said, dabbingat the yellow stuff with his hand to remove it from my garments.

I stood passive and panting, allowing him to beat off the jelly from myknees and elbows and lecture me upon my misfortunes. " We don't quiteallow for the gravitation. Our muscles are scarcely educated yet. We mustpractise a little, when you have got your breath."

I pulled two or three little thorns out of my hand, and sat for a time ona boulder of rock. My muscles were quivering, and I had that feeling ofpersonal disillusionment that comes at the first fall to the learner ofcycling on earth.

It suddenly occurred to Cavor that the cold air in the gully, after thebrightness of the sun, might give me a fever. So we clambered back intothe sunlight. We found that beyond a few abrasions I had received noserious injuries from my tumble, and at Cavor's suggestion we werepresently looking round for some safe and easy landing-place for my nextleap. We chose a rocky slab some ten yards off, separated from us by alittle thicket of olive-green spikes.

"Imagine it there!" said Cavor, who was assuming the airs of a trainer,and he pointed to a spot about four feet from my toes. This leap I managedwithout difficulty, and I must confess I found a certain satisfaction inCavor's falling short by a foot or so and tasting the spikes of the scrub."One has to be careful you see," he said, pulling out his thorns, and withthat he ceased to be my Mentor and became my fellow-learner in the art oflunar locomotion.

We chose a still easier jump and did it without difficulty, and then leaptback again, and to and fro several times, accustoming our muscles to thenew standard. I could never have believed had I not experienced it, howrapid that adaptation would be. In a very little time indeed, certainlyafter fewer than thirty leaps, we could judge the effort necessary for adistance with almost terrestrial assurance.

And all this time the lunar plants were growing around us, higher anddenser and more entangled, every moment thicker and taller, spiked plants,green cactus masses, fungi, fleshy and lichenous things, strangest radiateand sinuous shapes. But we were so intent upon our leaping, that for atime we gave no heed to their unfaltering expansion.

An extraordinary elation had taken possession of us. Partly, I think, itwas our sense of release from the confinement of the sphere. Mainly,however, the thin sweetness of the air, which I am certain contained amuch larger proportion of oxygen than our terrestrial atmosphere. In spiteof the strange quality of all about us, I felt as adventurous andexperimental as a cockney would do placed for the first time amongmountains and I do not think it occurred to either of us, face to facethough we were with the unknown, to be very greatly afraid.

We were bitten by a spirit of enterprise. We selected a lichenous kopjeperhaps fifteen yards away, and landed neatly on its summit one after theother. "Good!" we cried to each other; "good!" and Cavor made three stepsand went off to a tempting slope of snow a good twenty yards and morebeyond. I stood for a moment struck by the grotesque effect of hissoaring figure - his dirty cricket cap, and spiky hair, his little roundbody, his arms and his knicker-bockered legs tucked up tightly - againstthe weird spaciousness of the lunar scene. A gust of laughter seized me,and then I stepped off to follow. Plump! I dropped beside him.

We made a few gargantuan strides, leapt three or four times more, and satdown at last in a lichenous hollow. Our lungs were painful. We sat holdingour sides and recovering our breath, looking appreciation to one another.Cavor panted something about "amazing sensations." And then came a thoughtinto my head. For the moment it did not seem a particularly appallingthought, simply a natural question arising out of the situation.

"By the way," I said, "where exactly is the sphere?"

Cavor looked at me. "Eh?"

The full meaning of what we were saying struck me sharply.

"Cavor!" I cried, laying a hand on his arm, "where is the sphere?"

Chapter 10

Lost Men in the Moon

HIS face caught something of my dismay. He stood up and stared about himat the scrub that fenced us in and rose about us, straining upward in apassion of growth. He put a dubious hand to his lips. He spoke with asudden lack of assurance. "I think," he said slowly, "we left it ...somewhere ... about there."

He pointed a hesitating finger that wavered in an arc.

"I'm not sure." His look of consternation deepened. "Anyhow," he said,with his eyes on me, "it can't be far."

We had both stood up. We made unmeaning ejaculations, our eyes sought inthe twining, thickening jungle round about us.

All about us on the sunlit slopes frothed and swayed the darting shrubs,the swelling cactus, the creeping lichens, and wherever the shade remainedthe snow-drifts lingered. North, south, east, and west spread an identicalmonotony of unfamiliar forms. And somewhere, buried already among thistangled confusion, was our sphere, our home, our only provision, our onlyhope of escape from this fantastic wilderness of ephemeral growths intowhich we had come.

"I think after all," he said, pointing suddenly, "it might be over there."

"No," I said. "We have turned in a curve. See! here is the mark of myheels. It's clear the thing must be more to the eastward, much more. No -the sphere must be over there."

"I think," said Cavor, "I kept the sun upon my right all the time."

"Every leap, it seems to me," I said, "my shadow flew before me."

We stared into one another's eyes. The area of the crater had becomeenormously vast to our imaginations, the growing thickets alreadyimpenetrably dense.

"Good heavens! What fools we have been!"

"It's evident that we must find it again," said Cavor, "and that soon. Thesun grows stronger. We should be fainting with the heat already if itwasn't so dry. And ... I'm hungry."

I stared at him. I had not suspected this aspect of the matter before. Butit came to me at once - a positive craving. "Yes," I said with emphasis."I am hungry too."

He stood up with a look of active resolution. "Certainly we must find thesphere."

As calmly as possible we surveyed the interminable reefs and thickets thatformed the floor of the crater, each of us weighing in silence the chancesof our finding the sphere before we were overtaken by heat and hunger.

"It can't be fifty yards from here," said Cavor, with indecisive gestures."The only thing is to beat round about until we come upon it."

"That is all we can do," I said, without any alacrity to begin our hunt."I wish this confounded spike bush did not grow so fast!"

"That's just it," said Cavor. "But it was lying on a bank of snow."

I stared about me in the vain hope of recognising some knoll or shrub thathad been near the sphere. But everywhere was a confusing sameness,everywhere the aspiring bushes, the distending fungi, the dwindling snowbanks, steadily and inevitably changed. The sun scorched and stung, thefaintness of an unaccountable hunger mingled with our infinite perplexity.And even as we stood there, confused and lost amidst unprecedented things,we became aware for the first time of a sound upon the moon other than theair of the growing plants, the faint sighing of the wind, or those that weourselves had made.

Boom. ... Boom. ... Boom.

It came from beneath our feet, a sound in the earth. We seemed to hear itwith our feet as much as with our ears. Its dull resonance was muffled bydistance, thick with the quality of intervening substance. No sound that Ican imagine could have astonished us more, or have changed more completelythe quality of things about us. For this sound, rich, slow, anddeliberate, seemed to us as though it could be nothing but the striking ofsome gigantic buried clock.

Boom. ... Boom. ... Boom.

Sound suggestive of still cloisters, of sleepless nights in crowdedcities, of vigils and the awaited hour, cf all that is orderly andmethodical in life, booming out pregnant and mysterious in this fantasticdesert! To the eye everything was unchanged: the desolation of bushes andcacti waving silently in the wind, stretched unbroken to the distantcliffs, the still dark sky was empty overhead, and the hot sun hung andburned. And through it all, a warning, a threat, throbbed this enigma ofsound.

Boom. ... Boom. ... Boom. ...

We questioned one another in faint and faded voices.

"A clock?"

"Like a clock!"

"What is it?"

"What can it be?"

"Count," was Cavor's belated suggestion, and at that word the strikingceased.

The silence, the rhythmic disappointment of the silence, came as a freshshock. For a moment one could doubt whether one had ever heard a sound. Orwhether it might not still be going on. Had I indeed heard a sound?

I felt the pressure of Cavor's hand upon my arm. He spoke in anundertone, as though he feared to wake some sleeping thing. "Let us keeptogether," he whispered, "and look for the sphere. We must get back to thesphere. This is beyond our understanding."

"Which way shall we go?"

He hesitated. An intense persuasion of presences, of unseen things aboutus and near us, dominated our minds. What could they be? Where could theybe? Was this arid desolation, alternately frozen and scorched, only theouter rind and mask of some subterranean world? And if so, what sort ofworld? What sort of inhabitants might it not presently disgorge upon us?

And then, stabbing the aching stillness as vivid and sudden as anunexpected thunderclap, came a clang and rattle as though great gates ofmetal had suddenly been flung apart.

"I do not understand!" he whispered close to my face. He waved his handvaguely skyward, the vague suggestion of still vaguer thoughts.

"A hiding-place! If anything came..."

I looked about us. I nodded my head in assent to him.

We started off, moving stealthily with the most exaggerated precautionsagainst noise. We went towards a thicket of scrub. A clangour like hammersflung about a boiler hastened our steps. "We must crawl," whispered Cavor.

The lower leaves of the bayonet plants, already overshadowed by the newerones above, were beginning to wilt and shrivel so that we could thrust ourway in among the thickening stems without serious injury. A stab in theface or arm we did not heed. At the heart of the thicket I stopped, andstared panting into Cavor's face.

"Subterranean," he whispered. "Below."

"They may come out."

"We must find the sphere!"

"Yes," I said; "but how?"

"Crawl till we come to it."

"But if we don't?"

"Keep hidden. See what they are like."

"We will keep together," said I.

He thought. "Which way shall we go?"

"We must take our chance."

We peered this way and that. Then very circumspectly, we began to crawlthrough the lower jungle, making, so far as we could judge, a circuit,halting now at every waving fungus, at every sound, intent only on thesphere from which we had so foolishly emerged. Ever and again from out ofthe earth beneath us came concussions, beatings, strange, inexplicable,mechanical sounds; and once, and then again, we thought we heardsomething, a faint rattle and tumult, borne to us through the air. Butfearful as we were we dared essay no vantage-point to survey the crater.For long we saw nothing of the beings whose sounds were so abundant andinsistent. But for the faintness of our hunger and the drying of ourthroats that crawling would have had the quality of a very vivid dream. Itwas so absolutely unreal. The only element with any touch of reality wasthese sounds.

Figure it to yourself! About us the dream-like jungle, with the silentbayonet leaves darting overhead, and the silent, vivid, sun-splashedlichens under our hands and knees, waving with the vigour of their growthas a carpet waves when the wind gets beneath it. Ever and again one of thebladder fungi, bulging and distending under the sun, loomed upon us. Everand again some novel shape in vivid colour obtruded. The very cells thatbuilt up these plants were as large as my thumb, like beads of colouredglass. And all these things were saturated in the unmitigated glare of thesun, were seen against a sky that was bluish black and spangled still, inspite of the sunlight, with a few surviving stars. Strange! the very formsand texture of the stones were strange. It was all strange, the feeling ofone's body was unprecedented, every other movement ended in a surprise.The breath sucked thin in one's throat, the blood flowed through one'sears in a throbbing tide - thud, thud, thud, thud....

And ever and again came gusts of turmoil, hammering, the clanging andthrob of machinery, and presently - the bellowing of great beasts!

Chapter 11

The Mooncalf Pastures

SO we two poor terrestrial castaways, lost in that wild-growing moonjungle, crawled in terror before the sounds that had come upon us. Wecrawled, as it seemed, a long time before we saw either Selenite ormooncalf, though we heard the bellowing and gruntulous noises of theselatter continually drawing nearer to us. We crawled through stony ravines,over snow slopes, amidst fungi that ripped like thin bladders at ourthrust, emitting a watery humour, over a perfect pavement of things likepuff-balls, and beneath interminable thickets of scrub. And ever morehelplessly our eyes sought for our abandoned sphere. The noise of themooncalves would at times be a vast flat calf-like sound, at times it roseto an amazed and wrathy bellowing, and again it would become a cloggedbestial sound, as though these unseen creatures had sought to eat andbellow at the same time.

Our first view was but an inadequate transitory glimpse, yet none the lessdisturbing because it was incomplete. Cavor was crawling in front at thetime, and he first was aware of their proximity. He stopped dead,arresting me with a single gesture.

A crackling and smashing of the scrub appeared to be advancing directlyupon us, and then, as we squatted close and endeavoured to judge of thenearness and direction of this noise, there came a terrific bellow behindus, so close and vehement that the tops of the bayonet scrub bent beforeit, and one felt the breath of it hot and moist. And, turning about, wesaw indistinctly through a crowd of swaying stems the mooncalf's shiningsides, and the long line of its back loomed out against the sky.

Of course it is hard for me now to say how much I saw at that time,because my impressions were corrected by subsequent observation. First ofall impressions was its enormous size; the girth of its body was somefourscore feet, its length perhaps two hundred. Its sides rose and fellwith its laboured breathing. I perceived that its gigantic, flabby bodylay along the ground, and that its skin was of a corrugated white,dappling into blackness along the backbone. But of its feet we sawnothing. I think also that we saw then the profile at least of the almostbrainless head, with its fat-encumbered neck, its slobbering omnivorousmouth, its little nostrils, and tight shut eyes. (For the mooncalfinvariably shuts its eyes in the presence of the sun.) We had a glimpse ofa vast red pit as it opened its mouth to bleat and bellow again; we had abreath from the pit, and then the monster heeled over like a ship, draggedforward along the ground, creasing all its leathery skin, rolled again,and so wallowed past us, smashing a path amidst the scrub, and wasspeedily hidden from our eyes by the dense interlacings beyond. Anotherappeared more distantly, and then another, and then, as though he wasguiding these animated lumps of provender to their pasture, a Selenitecame momentarily into ken. My grip upon Cavor's foot became convulsive atthe sight of him, and we remained motionless and peering long after he hadpassed out of our range.

By contrast with the mooncalves he seemed a trivial being, a mere ant,scarcely five feet high. He was, wearing garments of some leatherysubstance, so that no portion of his actual body appeared, but of this, ofcourse, we were entirely ignorant. He presented himself, therefore, as acompact, bristling creature, having much of the quality of a complicatedinsect, with whip-like tentacles and a clanging arm projecting from hisshining cylindrical body case. The form of his head was hidden by hisenormous many-spiked helmet - we discovered afterwards that he used thespikes for prodding refractory mooncalves - and a pair of goggles ofdarkened glass, set very much at the side, gave a bird-like quality to themetallic apparatus that covered his face. His arms did not project beyondhis body case, and he carried himself upon short legs that, wrapped thoughthey were in warm coverings, seemed to our terrestrial eyes inordinatelyflimsy. They had very short thighs, very long shanks, and little feet.

In spite of his heavy-looking clothing, he was progressing with what wouldbe, from the terrestrial point of view, very considerable strides, and hisclanging arm was busy. The quality of his motion during the instant of hispassing suggested haste and a certain anger, and soon after we had lostsight of him we heard the bellow of a mooncalf change abruptly into ashort, sharp squeal followed by the scuffle of its acceleration. Andgradually that bellowing receded, and then came to an end, as if thepastures sought had been attained.

We listened. For a space the moon world was still. But it was some timebefore we resumed our crawling search for the vanished sphere.

When next we saw mooncalves they were some little distance away from us ina place of tumbled rocks. The less vertical surfaces of the rocks werethick with a speckled green plant growing in dense mossy clumps, uponwhich these creatures were browsing. We stopped at the edge of the reedsamidst which we were crawling at the sight of them, peering out at thenand looking round for a second glimpse of a Selenite. They lay againsttheir food like stupendous slugs, huge, greasy hulls, eating greedily andnoisily, with a sort of sobbing avidity. They seemed monsters of merefatness, clumsy and overwhelmed to a degree that would make a Smithfieldox seem a model of agility. Their busy, writhing, chewing mouths, and eyesclosed, together with the appetising sound of their munching, made up aneffect of animal enjoyment that was singularly stimulating to our emptyframes.

"Hogs!" said Cavor, with unusual passion. "Dis- gusting hogs!" and afterone glare of angry envy crawled off through the bushes to our right. Istayed long enough to see that the speckled plant was quite hopeless forhuman nourishment, then crawled after him, nibbling a quill of it betweenmy teeth.

Presently we were arrested again by the proximity of a Selenite, and thistime we were able to observe him more exactly. Now we could see that theSelenite covering was indeed clothing, and not a sort of crustaceanintegument. He was quite similar in his costume to the former one we hadglimpsed, except that ends of something like wadding were protruding fronthis neck, and he stood on a promontory of rock and moved his head this wayand that, as though he was surveying the crater. We lay quite still,fearing to attract his attention if we moved, and after a time he turnedabout and disappeared.

We came upon another drove of mooncalves bellowing up a ravine, and thenwe passed over a place of sounds, sounds of beating machinery as if somehuge hall of industry came near the surface there. And while these soundswere still about us we came to the edge of a great open space, perhaps twohundred yards in diameter, and perfectly level. Save for a few lichensthat advanced from its margin this space was bare, and presented a powderysurface of a dusty yellow colour. We were afraid to strike out acrossthis space, but as it presented less obstruction to our crawling than thescrub, we went down upon it and began very circumspectly to skirt itsedge.

For a little while the noises from below ceased and everything, save forthe faint stir of the growing vegetation, was very still. Then abruptlythere began an uproar, louder, more vehement, and nearer than any we hadso far heard. Of a certainty it came from below. Instinctively we crouchedas flat as we could, ready for a prompt plunge into the thicket beside us.Each knock and throb seemed to vibrate through our bodies. Louder grewthis throbbing and beating, and that irregular vibration increased untilthe whole moon world seemed to be jerking and pulsing.

"Cover," whispered Cavor, and I turned towards the bushes.

At that instant came a thud like the thud of a gun, and then a thinghappened - it still haunts me in my dreams. I had turned my head to lookat Cavor's face, and thrust out my hand in front of me as I so. And myhand met nothing! Plunged suddenly into a bottomless hole!

My chest hit something hard, and I found myself with my chin on the edgeof an unfathomable abyss that had suddenly opened beneath me, my handextended stiffly into the void. The whole of that flat circular area wasno more than a gigantic lid, that was now sliding sideways from off thepit it had covered into a slot prepared for it.

Had it not been for Cavor I think I should have remained rigid, hangingover this margin and staring into the enormous gulf below, until at lastthe edges of the slot scraped me off and hurled me into its depths. ButCavor had not received the shock that had paralysed me. He had been alittle distance from the edge when the lid had first opened, andperceiving the peril that held me helpless, gripped my legs and pulled mebackward. I came into a sitting position, crawled away from the edge for aspace on all fours, then staggered up and ran after him across thethundering, quivering sheet of metal. It seemed to be swinging open with asteadily accelerated velocity, and the bushes in front of me shiftedsideways as I ran.

I was none too soon. Cavor's back vanished amidst the bristling thicket,and as I scrambled up after him, the monstrous valve came into itsposition with a clang. For a long time we lay panting, not daring toapproach the pit.

But at last very cautiously and bit by bit we crept into a position fromwhich we could peer down. The bushes about us creaked and waved with theforce of a breeze that was blowing down the shaft. We could see nothing atfirst except smooth vertical walls descending at last into an impenetrableblack. And then very gradually we became aware of a number of very faintand little lights going to and fro.

For a time that stupendous gulf of mystery held us so that we forgot evenour sphere. In time, as we grew more accustomed to the darkness, we couldmake out very small, dim, elusive shapes moving about among thoseneedle-point illuminations. We peered amazed and incredulous,understanding so little that we could find no words to say. We coulddistinguish nothing that would give us a clue to the meaning of the faintshapes we saw.

"What can it be?" I asked; "what can it be?"

"The engineering!... They must live in these caverns during the night, andcome out during the day."

"Cavor! " I said. "Can they be - that - it was something like -, men?"

"That was not a man."

"We dare risk nothing"

"We dare do nothing until we find the sphere!"

"We can do nothing until we find the sphere."

He assented with a groan and stirred himself to move. He stared about himfor a space, sighed, and indicated a direction. We struck out through thejungle. For a time we crawled resolutely, then with diminishing vigour.Presently among great shapes of flabby purple there came a noise oftrampling and cries about us. We lay close, and for a long time the soundswent to and fro and very near. But this time we saw nothing. I tried towhisper to Cavor that I could hardly go without food much longer, but mymouth had become too dry for whispering.

"Cavor," I said, "I must have food."

He turned a face full of dismay towards me. "It's a case for holding out,"he said.

"But I must," I said, "and look at my lips!"

"I've been thirsty some time."

"If only some of that snow had remained!"

"It's clean gone! We're driving from arctic to tropical at the rate of adegree a minute. ..."

I gnawed my hand.

"The sphere!" he said. "There is nothing for it but the sphere."

We roused ourselves to another spurt of crawling. My mind ran entirely onedible things, on the hissing profundity of summer drinks, moreparticularly I craved for beer. I was haunted by the memory of a sixteengallon cask that had swaggered in my Lympne cellar. I thought of theadjacent larder, and especially of steak and kidney pie - tender steak andplenty of kidney, and rich, thick gravy between. Ever and again I wasseized with fits of hungry yawning. We came to flat places overgrown withfleshy red things, monstrous coralline growths; as we pushed against themthey snapped and broke. I noted the quality of the broken surfaces. Theconfounded stuff certainly looked of a biteable texture. Then it seemed tome that it smelt rather well.

I picked up a fragment and sniffed at it.

"Cavor," I said in a hoarse undertone.

He glanced at me with his face screwed up. "Don't,"

he said. I put down the fragment, and we crawled on through this temptingfleshiness for a space.

"Cavor," I asked, "why not?"

"Poison," I heard him say, but he did not look round.

We crawled some way before I decided.

"I'll chance it," said I.

He made a belated gesture to prevent me. I stuffed my mouth full. Hecrouched watching my face, his own twisted into the oddest expression."It's good," I said.

"O Lord!" he cried.

He watched me munch, his face wrinkled between desire and disapproval,then suddenly succumbed to appetite and began to tear off huge mouthfuls.For a time we did nothing but eat.

The stuff was not unlike a terrestrial mushroom, only it was much laxer intexture, and, as one swallowed it, it warmed the throat. At first weexperienced a mere mechanical satisfaction in eating; then our blood beganto run warmer, and we tingled at the lips and fingers, and then new andslightly irrelevant ideas came bubbling up in our minds.

"Its good," said I. "Infernally good! What a home for our surpluspopulation! Our poor surplus population," and I broke off another largeportion. It filled me with a curiously benevolent satisfaction that therewas such good food in the moon. The depression of my hunger gave way to anirrational exhilaration. The dread and discomfort in which I had beenliving vanished entirely. I perceived the moon no longer as a planet fromwhich I most earnestly desired the means of escape, but as a possiblerefuge from human destitution. I think I forgot the Selenites, themooncalves, the lid, and the noises completely so soon as I had eaten thatfungus.

Cavor replied to my third repetition of my "surplus population" remarkwith similar words of approval. I felt that my head swam, but I put thisdown to the stimulating effect cf food after a long fast. " Ess'lentdiscov'ry yours, Cavor,' said I. "Se'nd on'y to the 'tato."

I looked at him, shocked at his suddenly hoarse voice, and by the badnessof his articulation. It occurred to me in a flash that he was intoxicated,possibly by the fungus. It also occurred to me that he erred in imagingthat he had discovered the moon; he had not discovered it, he had onlyreached it. I tried to lay my hand on his arm and explain this to him, butthe issue was too subtle for his brain. It was also unexpectedly difficultto express. After a momentary attempt to understand me - I rememberwondering if the fungus had made my eyes as fishy as his - he set off uponsome observations on his own account.

"We are," he announced with a solemn hiccup, "the creashurs o' Mat we eatand drink."

He repeated this, and as I was now in one of my subtle moods, I determinedto dispute it. Possibly I wandered a little from the point. But Cavorcertainly did not attend at all properly. He stood up as well as he could,putting a hand on my head to steady I himself, which was disrespectful,and stood staring about him, quite devoid now of any fear of the moonbeings.

I tried to point out that this was dangerous for some reason that was notperfectly clear to me, but the word "dangerous" had somehow got mixed with"indiscreet," and came out rather more like "injurious" than either; andafter an attempt to disentangle them, I resumed my argument, addressingmyself principally to the unfamiliar but attentive coralline growths oneither side. I felt that it was necessary to clear up this confusionbetween the moon and a potato at once - I wandered into a long parenthesison the importance of precision of definition in argument. I did my best toignore the fact that my bodily sensations were no longer agreeable.

In some way that I have now forgotten, my mind was led back to projects ofcolonisation. "We must annex this moon," I said. " There must be noshilly-shally. This is part of the White Man's Burthen. Cavor - we are -hic - Satap - mean Satraps! Nempire Ceasar never dreamt. B'in all thenewspapers. Cavorecia. Bedfordecia. Bedfordecia - hic - Limited. Mean -unlimited! Practically."

Certainly I was intoxicated.

I embarked upon an argument to show the infinite benefits our arrivalwould confer on the moon. I involved myself in a rather difficult proofthat the arrival of Columbus was, on the whole, beneficial to America. Ifound I had forgotten the line of argument I had intended to pursue, andcontinued to repeat "Simlar to C'lumbus," to fill up time.

From that joint my memory of the action of that abominable fungus becomesconfused. I remember vaguely that we declared our intention of standing nononsense from any confounded insects, that we decided it ill became men tohide shamefully upon a mere satellite, that we equipped ourselves withhuge armfuls of the fungus - whether for missile purposes or not I do notknow - and, heedless of the stabs of the bayonet scrub, we started forthinto the sunshine.

Almost immediately we must have come upon the Selenites. There were six ofthem, and they were marching in single file over a rocky place, making themost remarkable piping and whining sounds. They all seemed to become awareof us at once, all instantly became silent and motionless, like animals,with their faces turned towards us.

Then suddenly, with a shout of fury, he made three vast strides and leapttowards them. He leapt badly; he made a series of somersaults in the air,whirled right over them, and vanished with an enormous splash amidst thecactus bladders. What the Selenites made of this amazing, and to my mindundignified irruption from another planet, I have no means of guessing. Iseem to remember the sight of their backs as they ran in all directions,but I am not sure. All these last incidents before oblivion came are vagueand faint in my mind. I know I made a step to follow Cavor, and trippedand fell headlong among the rocks. I was, I am certain, suddenly andvehemently ill. I seem to remember, a violent struggle and being grippedby metallic clasps. ...

My next clear recollection is that we were prisoners at we knew not whatdepths beneath the moon's surface; we were in darkness amidst strangedistracting noises; our bodies were covered with scratches and bruises,and our heads racked with pain.

Chapter 12

The Selenite's Face

I FOUND myself sitting crouched together in a tumultuous darkness. For along time I could not understand where I was, nor how I had come to thisperplexity. I thought of the cupboard into which I had been thrust attimes when I was a child, and then of a very dark and noisy bedroom inwhich I had slept during an illness. But these sounds about me were notthe noises I had known, and there was a thin flavour in the air like thewind of a stable. Then I supposed we must still be at work upon thesphere, and that somehow I had got into the cellar of Cavor's house. Iremembered we had finished the sphere, and fancied I must still be in itand travelling through space.

"Cavor," I said, "cannot we have some light?"

There came no answer.

"Cavor!" I insisted.

I was answered by a groan. "My head!" I heard him say; "my head!"

I attempted to press my hands to my brow, which ached, and discovered theywere tied together. This startled me very much. I brought them up to mymouth and felt the cold smoothness of metal. They were chained together. Itried to separate my legs and made out they were similarly fastened, andalso that I was fastened to the ground by a much thicker chain about themiddle of my body.

I was more frightened that I had yet been by anything in all our strangeexperiences. For a time I tugged silently at my bonds. " Cavor! " I criedout sharply. "Why am I tied? Why have you tied me hand and foot? "

"I haven't tied you," he answered. "It's the Selenites."

The Selenites! My mind hung on that for a space. Then my memories cameback to me: the snowy desolation, the thawing of the air, the growth of"the plants, our strange hopping and crawling among the rocks andvegetation of the crater. All the distress of our frantic search for thesphere returned to me. ... Finally the opening of the great lid thatcovered the pit!

Then as I strained to trace our later movements down to our presentplight, the pain in my head became intolerable. I came to aninsurmountable barrier, an obstinate blank.

"Cavor!"

"Yes?"

"Where are we?

"How should I know?"

"Are we dead?"

"What nonsense!"

"They've got us, then!"

He made no answer but a grunt. The lingering traces of the poison seemedto make him oddly irritable.

"What do you mean to do?"

"How should I know what to do?"

"Oh, very well!" said I, and became silent. Presently, I was roused froma stupor. "O Lord!" I cried; "I wish you'd stop that buzzing!"

We lapsed into silence again, listening to the dull confusion of noiseslike the muffled sounds of a street or factory that filled our ears. Icould make nothing of it, my mind pursued first one rhythm and thenanother, and questioned it in vain. But after a long time I became awareof a new and sharper element, not mingling with the rest but standing out,as it were, against that cloudy background of sound. It was a series ofrelatively very little definite sounds, tappings and rubbings, like aloose spray of ivy against a window or a bird moving about upon a box. Welistened and peered about us, but the darkness was a velvet pall. Therefollowed a noise like the subtle movement of the wards of a well-oiledlock. And then there appeared before me, hanging as it seemed in animmensity of black, a thin bright line.

"Look!" whispered Cavor very softly.

"What is it?"

"I don't know."

We stared.

The thin bright line became a band, and broader and paler. It took uponitself the quality of a bluish light falling upon a white-washed wall. Itceased to be parallel-sided; it developed a deep indentation on one side.I turned to remark this to Cavor, and was amazed to see his ear in abrilliant illumination - all the rest of him in shadow. I twisted my headround as well as my bonds would permit. "Cavor," I said, "it's behind!"

His ear vanished - gave place to an eye!

Suddenly the crack that had been admitting the light broadened out, andrevealed itself as the space of an opening door. Beyond was a sapphirevista, and in the doorway stood a grotesque outline silhouetted againstthe glare.

We both made convulsive efforts to turn, and failing, sat staring over ourshoulders at this. My first impression was of some clumsy quadruped withlowered head. Then I perceived it was the slender pinched body and shortand extremely attenuated bandy legs of a Selenite, with his head depressedbetween his shoulders. He was without the helmet and body covering theywear upon the exterior.

He was a blank, black figure to us, but instictively our imaginationssupplied features to his very human outline. I, at least, took itinstantly that he was somewhat hunchbacked, with a high forehead and longfeatures.

He came forward three steps and paused for a time. His movements seemedabsolutely noiseless. Then he came forward again. He walked like a bird,his feet fell one in front of the other. He stepped out of the ray oflight that came through the doorway, and it seemed as though he vanishedaltogether in the shadow.

For a moment my eyes sought him in the wrong place, and then I perceivedhim standing facing us both in the full light. Only the human features Ihad attributed to him were not there at all!

Of course I ought to have expected that, only I didn't. It came to me asan absolute, for a moment an overwhelming shock. It seemed as though itwasn't a face, as though it must needs be a mask, a horror, a deformity,that would presently be disavowed or explained. There was no nose, and thething had dull bulging eyes at the side - in the silhouette I had supposedthey were ears. There were no ears. ... I have tried to draw one of theseheads, but I cannot. There was a mouth, downwardly curved, like a humanmouth in a face that stares ferociously. ...

The neck on which the head was poised was jointed in three places, almostlike the short joints in the leg of a crab. The joints of the limbs Icould not see, because of the puttee-like straps in which they wereswathed, and which formed the only clothing the being wore.

There the thing was, looking at us!

At the time my mind was taken up by the mad impossibility of the creature.I suppose he also was amazed, and with more reason, perhaps, for amazementthan we. Only, confound him! he did not show it. We did at least know whathad brought about this meeting of incompatible creatures. But conceive howit would seem to decent Londoners, for example, to come upon a couple ofliving things, as big as men and absolutely unlike any other earthlyanimals, careering about among the sheep in Hyde Park! It must have takenhim like that.

Figure us! We were bound hand and foot, fagged and filthy; our beards twoinches long, our faces scratched and bloody. Cavor you must imagine in hisknickerbockers (torn in several places by the bayonet scrub) his Jaegarshirt and old cricket cap, his wiry hair wildly disordered, a tail toevery quarter of the heavens. In that blue light his face did not look redbut very dark, his lips and the drying blood upon my hands seemed black.If possible I was in a worse plight than he, on account of the yellowfungus into which I had jumped. Our jackets were unbuttoned, and our shoeshad been taken off and lay at our feet. And we were sitting with our backsto this queer bluish light, peering at such a monster as Durer might haveinvented.

Cavor broke the silence; started to speak, went hoarse, and cleared histhroat. Outside began a terrific bellowing, as if a mooncalf were introuble. It ended in a shriek, and everything was still again.

Presently the Selenite turned about, flickered into the shadow, stood fora moment retrospective at the door, and then closed it on us; and oncemore we were in that murmurous mystery of darkness into which we hadawakened.

Chapter 13

Mr. Cavor Makes Some Sugestions

FOR a time neither of us spoke. To focus together all the things we hadbrought upon ourselves, seemed beyond my mental powers.

"They've got us," I said at last.

"It was that fungus."

"Well - if I hadn't taken it we should have fainted and starved."

"We might have found the sphere."

I lost my temper at his persistence, and swore to myself. For a time wehated one another in silence. I drummed with my fingers on the floorbetween my knees, and gritted the links of my fetters together. PresentlyI was forced to talk again.

"What do you make of it, anyhow?" I asked humbly.

"They are reasonable creatures - they can make things and do things.Those lights we saw..."

He stopped. It was clear he could make nothing of it.

When he spoke again it was to confess, "After all, they are more humanthan we had a right to expect. I suppose -"

He stopped irritatingly.

"Yes?"

"I suppose, anyhow - on any planet where there is an intelligent animal -it will carry its brain case upward, and have hands, and walk erect."

Presently he broke away in another direction.

"We are some way in," he said. "I mean - perhaps a couple of thousand feetor more."

"Why?"

"It's cooler. And our voices are so much louder. That faded quality - ithas altogether gone. And the feeling in one's ears and throat."

I had not noted that, but I did now.

"The air is denser. We must be some depths - a mile even, we may be -inside the moon."

"We never thought of a world inside the moon."

"No."

"How could we?"

"We might have done. Only one gets into habits of mind."

He thought for a time.

"Now," he said, "it seems such an obvious thing."

"Of course! The moon must be enormously cavernous, with an atmospherewithin, and at the centre of its caverns a sea.

"One knew that the moon had a lower specific gravity than the earth, oneknew that it had little air or water outside, one knew, too, that it wassister planet to the earth, and that it was unaccountable that it shouldbe different in composition. The inference that it was hollowed out was asclear as day. And yet one never saw it as a fact. Kepler, of course -"

His voice had the interest now of a man who has discerned a prettysequence of reasoning.

"Yes," he said, "Kepler with his sub-volvani was right after all."

"I wish you had taken the trouble to find that out before we came," Isaid.

He answered nothing, buzzing to himself softly, as he pursued histhoughts. My temper was going.

"Good Lord!" I exclaimed. "Just think of all the trouble we took to getinto this pickle! What did we come for? What are we after? What was themoon to us or we to the moon? We wanted too much, we tried too much. Weought to have started the little things first. It was you proposed themoon! Those Cavorite spring blinds! I am certain we could have worked themfor terrestrial purposes. Certain! Did you really understand what Iproposed? A steel cylinder - "

"Rubbish!" said Cavor.

We ceased to converse.

For a time Cavor kept up a broken monologue without much help from me.

"If they find it," he began, "if they find it ... what will they do withit? Well, that's a question. It may be that's the question. They won'tunderstand it, anyhow. If they understood that sort of thing they wouldhave come long since to the earth. Would they? Why shouldn't they? Butthey would have sent something - they couldn't keep their hands off such apossibility. No! But they will examine it. Clearly they are intelligentand inquisitive. They will examine it - get inside it - trifle with thestuds. Off! .. That would mean the moon for us for all the rest of ourlives. Strange creatures, strange knowledge ..."

"As for strange knowledge - " said I, and language failed me.

"Look here, Bedford," said Cavor, "you came on this expedition of your ownfree will."

"You said to me, 'Call it prospecting'."

"There's always risks in prospecting."

"Especially when you do it unarmed and without thinking out everypossibility."

"I was so taken up with the sphere. The thing rushed on us, and carried usaway."

"Rushed on me, you mean."

"Rushed on me just as much. How was I to know when I set to work onmolecular physics that the business would bring me here - of all places?"

"It's this accursed science," I cried. "It's the very Devil. The medievalpriests and persecutors were right and the Moderns are all wrong. Youtamper with it - and it offers you gifts. And directly you take them itknocks you to pieces in some unexpected way. Old passions and new weapons- now it upsets your religion, now it upsets your social ideas, now itwhirls you off to desolation and misery!"

"Anyhow, it's no use your quarrelling with me now. These creatures -these Selenites, or whatever we choose to call them - have got us tiedhand and foot. Whatever temper you choose to go through with it in, youwill have to go through with it. ... We have experiences before us thatwill need all our coolness."

He paused as if he required my assent. But I sat sulking. "Confound yourscience!" I said.

"The problem is communication. Gestures, I fear, will be different.Pointing, for example. No creatures but men and monkeys point."

That was too obviously wrong for me. "Pretty nearly every animal," Icried, "points with its eyes or nose."

Cavor meditated over that. "Yes," he said at last, "and we don't. There'ssuch differences - such differences!"

"One might. ... But how can I tell? There is speech. The sounds they make,a sort of fluting and piping. I don't see how we are to imitate that. Isit their speech, that sort of thing? They may have different senses,different means of communication. Of course they are minds and we areminds; there must be something in common. Who knows how far we may not getto an understanding?"

"The things are outside us," I said. "They're more different from us thanthe strangest animals on earth. They are a different clay. What is thegood of talking like this?"

Cavor thought. "I don't see that. Where there are minds they will havesomething similar - even though they have been evolved on differentplanets. Of course if it was a question of instincts, if we or they areno more than animals "

"Well, are they? They're much more like ants on their hind legs than humanbeings, and who ever got to any sort of understanding with ants?"

"The resemblance must bridge it. I remember reading once a paper by thelate Professor Galton on the possibility of communication between theplanets. Unhappily, at that time it did not seem probable that that wouldbe of any material benefit to me, and I fear I did not give it theattention I should have done - in view of this state of affairs. Yet. ...Now, let me see!

"His idea was to begin with those broad truths that must underlie allconceivable mental existences and establish a basis on those. The greatprinciples of geometry, to begin with. He proposed to take some leadingproposition of Euclid's, and show by construction that its truth was knownto us, to demonstrate, for example, that the angles at the base of anisosceles triangle are equal, and that if the equal sides be produced theangles on the other side of the base are equal also, or that the square onthe hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of thesquares on the two other sides. By demonstrating our knowledge of thesethings we should demonstrate our possession of a reasonableintelligence... Now, suppose I ... I might draw the geometrical figurewith a wet finger, or even trace it in the air ..."

He fell silent. I sat meditating his words. For a time his wild hope ofcommunication, of interpretation, with these weird beings held me. Thenthat angry despair that was a part of my exhaustion and physical miseryresumed its sway. I perceived with a sudden novel vividness theextraordinary folly of everything I had ever done. "Ass!" I said; "oh,ass, unutterable ass. ... I seem to exist only to go about doingpreposterous things. Why did we ever leave the thing? ... Hopping aboutlooking for patents and concessions in the craters of the moon!... If onlywe had had the sense to fasten a handkerchief to a stick to show where wehad left the sphere!

I subsided, fuming.

"It is clear," meditated Cavor, "they are intelligent. One canhypotheticate certain things. As they have not killed us at once, theymust have ideas of mercy. Mercy! at any rate of restraint. Possibly ofintercourse. They may meet us. And this apartment and the glimpses we hadof its guardian. These fetters! A high degree of intelligence..."

"I wish to heaven," cried I, "I'd thought even twice! Plunge after plunge.First one fluky start and then another. It was my confidence in you! Whydidn't I stick to my play? That was what I was equal to. That was my worldand the life I was made for. I could have finished that play. I'm certain... it was a good play. I had the scenario as good as done. Then. ...Conceive it! leaping to the moon! Practically I've thrown my life away!That old woman in the inn near Canterbury had better sense."

I looked up, and stopped in mid-sentence. The darkness had given place tothat bluish light again. The door was opening, and several noiselessSelenites were coming into the chamber. I became quite still, staring attheir grotesque faces.

Then suddenly my sense of disagreeable strangeness changed to interest. Iperceived that the foremost and second carried bowls. One elemental needat least our minds could understand in common. They were bowls of somemetal that, like our fetters, looked dark in that bluish light; and eachcontained a number of whitish fragments. All the cloudy pain and miserythat oppressed me rushed together and took the shape of hunger. I eyedthese bowls wolfishly, and, though it returned to me in dreams, at thattime it seemed a small matter that at the end of the arms that lowered onetowards me were not hands, but a sort of flap and thumb, like the end ofan elephant's trunk. The stuff in the bowl was loose in texture, andwhitish brown in colour - rather like lumps of some cold souffle, and itsmelt faintly like mushrooms. From a partially divided carcass of amooncalf that we presently saw, I am inclined to believe it must have beenmooncalf flesh.

My hands were so tightly chained that I could barely contrive to reach thebowl; but when they saw the effort I made, two of them dexterouslyreleased one of the turns about my wrist. Their tentacle hands were softand cold to my skin. I immediately seized a mouthful of the food. It hadthe same laxness in texture that all organic structures seem to have uponthe moon; it tasted rather like a gauffre or a damp meringue, but in noway was it disagreeable. I took two other mouthfuls. "I wanted - foo'! "said I, tearing off a still larger piece. ...

For a time we ate with an utter absence of selfconsciousness. We ate andpresently drank like tramps in a soup kitchen. Never before nor since haveI been hungry to the ravenous pitch, and save that I have had this veryexperience I could never have believed that, a quarter of a million ofmiles out of our proper world, in utter perplexity of soul, surrounded,watched, touched by beings more grotesque and inhuman than the worstcreations of a nightmare, it would be possible for me to eat in utterforgetfulness of all these things. They stood about us watching us, andever and again making a slight elusive twittering that stood the suppose,in the stead of speech. I did not even shiver at their touch. And when thefirst zeal of my feeding was over, I could note that Cavor, too, had beeneating with the same shameless abandon.

Chapter 14

Experiments in intercourse

WHEN at last we had made an end of eating, the Selenites linked our handsclosely together again, and then untwisted the chains about our feet andrebound them, so as to give us a limited freedom of movement. Then theyunfastened the chains about our waists. To do all this they had to handleus freely, and ever and again one of their queer heads came down close tomy face, or a soft tentacle-hand touched my head or neck. I don't rememberthat I was afraid then or repelled by their proximity. I think that ourincurable anthropomorphism made us imagine there were human heads insidetheir masks. The skin, like everything else, looked bluish, but that wason account of the light; and it was hard and shiny, quite in thebeetle-wing fashion, not soft, or moist, or hairy, as a vertebratedanimal's would be. Along the crest of the head was a low ridge of whitishspines running from back to front, and a much larger ridge curved oneither side over the eyes. The Selenite who untied me used his mouth tohelp his hands.

"They seem to be releasing us," said Cavor. "Remember we are on the moon!Make no sudden movements!"

"Are you going to try that geometry?"

"If I get a chance. But, of course, they may make an advance first."

We remained passive, and the Selenites, having finished theirarrangements, stood back from us, and seemed to be looking at us. I sayseemed to be, because as their eyes were at the side and not in front, onehad the same difficulty in determining the direction in which they werelooking as one has in the case of a hen or a fish. They conversed with oneanother in their reedy tones, that seemed to me impossible to imitate ordefine. The door behind us opened wider, and, glancing over my shoulder, Isaw a vague large space beyond, in which quite a little crowd of Seleniteswere standing. They seemed a curiously miscellaneous rabble.

"Do they want us to imitate those sounds? " I asked Cavor.

"I don't think so," he said.

"It seems to me that they are trying to make us understand something."

"I can't make anything of their gestures. Do you notice this one, who isworrying with his head like a man with an uncomfortable collar? "

"Let us shake our heads at him."

We did that, and finding it ineffectual, attempted an imitation of theSelenites' movements. That seemed to interest them. At any rate they allset up the same movement. But as that seemed to lead to nothing, wedesisted at last and so did they, and fell into a piping argument amongthemselves. Then one of them, shorter and very much thicker than theothers, and with a particularly wide mouth, squatted down suddenly besideCavor, and put his hands and feet in the same posture as Cavor's werebound, and then by a dexterous movement stood up.

"Cavor," I shouted, "they want us to get up!"

He stared open-mouthed. "That's it!" he said.

And with much heaving and grunting, because our hands were tied together,we contrived to struggle to our feet. The Selenites made way for ourelephantine heavings, and seemed to twitter more volubly. As soon as wewere on our feet the thick-set Selenite came and patted each of our faceswith his tentacles, and walked towards the open doorway. That also wasplain enough, and we followed him. We saw that four of the Selenitesstanding in the doorway were much taller than the others, and clothed inthe same manner as those we had seen in the crater, namely, with spikedround helmets and cylindrical body-cases, and that each of the fourcarried a goad with spike and guard made of that same dull-looking metalas the bowls. These four closed about us, one on either side of each ofus, as we emerged from our chamber into the cavern from which the lighthad come.

We did not get our impression of that cavern all at once. Our attentionwas taken up by the movements and attitudes of the Selenites immediatelyabout us, and by the necessity of controlling our motion, lest we shouldstartle and alarm them and ourselves by some excessive stride. In front ofus was the short, thick-set being who had solved the problem of asking usto get up, moving with gestures that seemed, almost all of them,intelligible to us, inviting us to follow him. His spout-like face turnedfrom one of us to the other with a quickness that was clearlyinterrogative. For a time, I say, we were taken up with these things.

But at last the great place that formed a background to our movementsasserted itself. It became apparent that the source of much, at least, ofthe tumult of sounds which had filled our ears ever since we had recoveredfrom the stupefaction of the fungus was a vast mass of machinery in activemovement, whose flying and whirling parts were visible indistinctly overthe heads and between the bodies of the Selenites who walked about us. Andnot only did the web of sounds that filled the air proceed from thismechanism, but also the peculiar blue light that irradiated the wholeplace. We had taken it as a natural thing that a subterranean cavernshould be artificially lit, and even now, though the fact was patent to myeyes, I did not really grasp its import until presently the darkness came.The meaning and structure of this huge apparatus we saw I cannot explain,because we neither of us learnt what it was for or how it worked. Oneafter another, big shafts of metal flung out and up from its centre, theirheads travelling in what seemed to me to be a parabolic path; each droppeda sort of dangling arm as it rose towards the apex of its flight andplunged down into a vertical cylinder, forcing this down before it. Aboutit moved the shapes of tenders, little figures that seemed vaguelydifferent from the beings about us. As each of the three dangling arms ofthe machine plunged down, there was a clank and then a roaring, and out ofthe top of the vertical cylinder came pouring this incandescent substancethat lit the place, and ran over as milk runs over a boiling pot, anddripped luminously into a tank of light below. It was a cold blue light, asort of phosphorescent glow but infinitely brighter, and from the tanksinto which it fell it ran in conduits athwart the cavern.

Thud, thud, thud, thud, came the sweeping arms of this unintelligibleapparatus, and the light substance hissed and poured. At first the thingseemed only reasonably large and near to us, and then I saw howexceedingly little the Selenites upon it seemed, and I realised the fullimmensity of cavern and machine. I looked from this tremendous affair tothe faces of the Selenites with a new respect. I stopped, and Cavorstopped, and stared at this thunderous engine.

"But this is stupendous!" I said. "What can it be for?"

Cavor's blue-lit face was full of an intelligent respect. "I can't dream!Surely these beings - Men could not make a thing like that! Look at thosearms, are they on connecting rods?"

The thick-set Selenite had gone some paces unheeded. He came back andstood between us and the great machine. I avoided seeing him, because Iguessed somehow that his idea was to beckon us onward. He walked away inthe direction he wished us to go, and turned and came back, and flickedour faces to attract our attention.

Cavor and I looked at one another.

"Cannot we show him we are interested in the machine? " I said.

"Yes," said Cavor. " We'll try that." He turned to our guide and smiled,and pointed to the machine, and pointed again, and then to his head, andthen to the machine. By some defect of reasoning he seemed to imagine thatbroken English might help these gestures. "Me look 'im," he said, "methink 'im very much. Yes."

His behaviour seemed to check the Selenites in their desire for ourprogress for a moment. They faced one another, their queer heads moved,the twittering voices came quick and liquid. Then one of them, a lean,tall creature, with a sort of mantle added to the puttee in which theothers were dressed, twisted his elephant trunk of a hand about Cavor'swaist, and pulled him gently to follow our guide, who again went on ahead.Cavor resisted. "We may just as well begin explaining ourselves now. Theymay think we are new animals, a new sort of mooncalf perhaps! It is mostimportant that we should show an intelligent interest from the outset."

He began to shake his head violently. "No, no," he said, "me not come onone minute. Me look at 'im."

" Isn't there some geometrical point you might bring in apropos of thataffair? " I suggested, as the Selenites conferred again.

"Possibly a parabolic -" be began.

He yelled loudly, and leaped six feet or more!

One of the four armed moon-men had pricked him with a goad!

I turned on the goad-bearer behind me with a swift threatening gesture,and he started back. This and Cavor's sudden shout and leap clearlyastonished all the Selenites. They receded hastily, facing us. For one ofthose moments that seem to last for ever, we stood in angry protest, witha scattered semicircle of these inhuman beings about us.

"He pricked me!" said Cavor, with a catching of the voice.

"I saw him," I answered.

"Confound it!" I said to the Selenites; "We're not going to stand that!What on earth do you take us for?"

I glanced quickly right and left. Far away across the blue wilderness ofcavern I saw a number of other Selenites running towards us; broad andslender they were, and one with a larger head than the others. The cavernspread wide and low, and receded in every direction into darkness. Itsroof, I remember, seemed to bulge down as if with the weight of the vastthickness of rocks that prisoned us. There was no way out of it - no wayout of it. Above, below, in every direction, was the unknown, and theseinhuman creatures, with goads and gestures, confronting us, and we twounsupported men!

Chapter 15

The Giddy Bridge

JUST for a moment that hostile pause endured. I suppose that both we andthe Selenites did some very rapid thinking. My clearest impression wasthat there was nothing to put my back against, and that we were bound tobe surrounded and killed. The overwhelming folly of our presence thereloomed over me in black, enormous reproach. Why had I ever launched myself on this mad, inhuman expedition?

Cavor came to my side and laid his hand on my arm. His pale and terrifiedface was ghastly in the blue light.

"We can't do anything," he said. "It's a mistake. They don't understand.We must go. As they want us to go."

I looked down at him, and then at the fresh Selenites who were coming tohelp their fellows. "If I had my hands free - "

"It's no use," he panted.

"No."

"We'll go."

And he turned about and led the way in the direction that had beenindicated for us.

I followed, trying to look as subdued as possible, and feeling at thechains about my wrists. My blood was boiling. I noted nothing more of thatcavern, though it seemed to take a long time before we had marched acrossit, or if I noted anything I forgot it as I saw it. My thoughts wereconcentrated, I think, upon my chains and the Selenites, and particularlyupon the helmeted ones with the goads. At first they marched parallel withus, and at a respectful distance, but presently they were overtaken bythree others, and then they drew nearer, until they were within armslength again. I winced like a beaten horse as they came near to us. Theshorter, thicker Selenite marched at first on our right flank, butpresently came in front of us again.

How well the picture of that grouping has bitten into my brain; the backof Cavor's downcast head just in front of me, and the dejected droop ofhis shoulders, and our guide's gaping visage, perpetually jerking abouthim, and the goad-bearers on either side, watchful, yet open-mouthed - ablue monochrome. And after all, I do remember one other thing besides thepurely personal affair, which is, that a sort of gutter came presentlyacross the floor of the cavern, and then ran along by the side of the pathof rock we followed. And it was full of that same bright blue luminousstuff that flowed out of the great machine. I walked close beside it, andI can testify it radiated not a particle of heat. It was brightly shining,and yet it was neither warmer nor colder than anything else in the cavern.

Clang, clang, clang, we passed right under the thumping levers of anothervast machine, and so came at last to a wide tunnel, in which we could evenhear the pad, pad, of our shoeless feet, and which, save for the tricklingthread of blue to the right of us, was quite unlit. The shadows madegigantic travesties of our shapes and those of the Selenites on theirregular wall and roof of the tunnel. Ever and again crystals in thewalls of the tunnel scintillated like gems, ever and again the tunnelexpanded into a stalactitic cavern, or gave off branches that vanishedinto darkness.

We seemed to be marching down that tunnel for a long time. "Trickle,trickle," went the flowing light very softly, and our footfalls and theirechoes made an irregular paddle, paddle. My mind settled down to thequestion of my chains. If I were to slip off one turn so, and then totwist it so ...

If I tried to do it very gradually, would they see I was slipping my wristout of the looser turn? If they did, what would they do?

"Bedford," said Cavor, "it goes down. It keeps on going down."

His remark roused me from my sullen pre-occupation.

"If they wanted to kill us," he said, dropping back to come level with me," there is no reason why they should not have done it."

"No," I admitted, "that's true."

"They don't understand us," he said, " they think we are merely strangeanimals, some wild sort of mooncalf birth, perhaps. It will be only whenthey have observed us better that they will begin to think we have minds"

"When you trace those geometrical problems," said I.

"It may be that."

We tramped on for a space.

"You see," said Cavor, "these may be Selenites of a lower class."

"The infernal fools!" said I viciously, glancing at their exasperatingfaces.

"If we endure what they do to us"

"We've got to endure it," said I.

"There may be others less stupid. This is the mere outer fringe of theirworld. It must go down and down, cavern, passage, tunnel, down at last tothe sea - hundreds of miles below."

His words made me think of the mile or so of rock and tunnel that might beover our heads already. It was like a weight dropping, on my shoulders."Away from the sun and air," I said. "Even a mine half a mile deep isstuffy." remarked.

"This is not, anyhow. It's probable - Ventilation! The air would blowfrom the dark side of the moon to the sunlit, and all the carbonic acidwould well out there and feed those plants. Up this tunnel, for example,there is quite a breeze. And what a world it must be. The earnest we havein that shaft, and those machines"

"And the goad," I said. "Don't forget the goad!"

He walked a little in front of me for a time.

"Even that goad - " he said.

"Well?"

"I was angry at the time. But it was perhaps necessary we should get on.They have different skins, and probably different nerves. They may notunderstand our objection - Just as a being from Mars might not like ourearthly habit of nudging"

"They'd better be careful how they nudge me."

"And about that geometry. After all, their way is a way of understanding,too. They begin with the elements of life and not of thought. Food.Compulsion. Pain. They strike at fundamentals."

"There's no doubt about that," I said.

He went on to talk of the enormous and wonderful world into which we werebeing taken. I realised slowly from his tone, that even now he was notabsolutely in despair at the prospect of going ever deeper into thisinhuman planet-burrow. His mind ran on machines and invention, to theexclusion of a thousand dark things that beset me. It wasn't that heintended to make any use of these things, he simply wanted to know them.

"After all," he said, " this is a tremendous occasion. It is the meetingof two worlds! What are we going to see? Think of what is below us here."

"We shan't see much if the light isn't better," I remarked.

"This is only the outer crust. Down below - On this scale - There will beeverything. Do you notice how different they seem one from another? Thestory we shall take back!"

"Some rare sort of animal," I said, "might comfort himself in that waywhile they were bringing him to the Zoo. ... It doesn't follow that we aregoing to be shown all these things."

"When they find we have reasonable minds," said Cavor, "they will want tolearn about the earth. Even if they have no generous emotions, they willteach in order to learn. ... And the things they must know! Theunanticipated things!"

He went on to speculate on the possibility of their knowing things he hadnever hoped to learn on earth, speculating in that way, with a raw woundfrom that goad already in his skin! Much that he said I forget, for myattention was drawn to the fact that the tunnel along which we had beenmarching was opening out wider and wider. We seemed, from the feeling ofthe air, to be going out into a huge space. But how big the space mightreally be we could not tell, because it was unlit. Our little stream oflight ran in a dwindling thread and vanished far ahead. Presently therocky walls had vanished altogether on either hand. There was nothing tobe seen but the path in front of us and the trickling hurrying rivulet ofblue phosphorescence. The figures of Cavor and the guiding Selenitemarched before me, the sides of their legs and heads that were towards therivulet were clear and bright blue, their darkened sides, now that thereflection of the tunnel wall no longer lit them, merged indistinguishablyin the darkness beyond.

And soon I perceived that we were approaching a declivity of some sort,because the little blue stream dipped suddenly out of sight.

In another moment, as it seemed, we had reached the edge. The shiningstream gave one meander of hesitation and then rushed over. It fell to adepth at which the sound of its descent was absolutely lost to us. Farbelow was a bluish glow, a sort of blue mist - at an infinite distancebelow. And the darkness the stream dropped out of became utterly void andblack, save that a thing like a plank projected from the edge of the cliffand stretched out and faded and vanished altogether. There was a warm airblowing up out of the gulf.

For a moment I and Cavor stood as near the edge as we dared, peering intoa blue-tinged profundity. And then our guide was pulling at my arm.

Then he left me, and walked to the end of that plank and stepped upon it,looking back. Then when he perceived we watched him, he turned about andwent on along it, walking as surely as though he was on firm earth. For amoment his form was distinct, then he became a blue blur, and thenvanished into the obscurity. I became aware of some vague shape loomingdarkly out of the black.

There was a pause. "Surely! -" said Cavor.

One of the other Selenites walked a few paces out upon the plank, andturned and looked back at us unconcernedly. The others stood ready tofollow after us. Our guide's expectant figure reappeared. He was returningto see why we had not advanced.

"What is that beyond there?" I asked.

"I can't see."

"We can't cross this at any price," said I.

"I could not go three steps on it," said Cavor, "even with my hands free."

We looked at each other's drawn faces in blank consternation.

"They can't know what it is to be giddy!" said Cavor.

"It's quite impossible for us to walk that plank."

"I don't believe they see as we do. I've been watching them. I wonder ifthey know this is simply blackness for us. How can we make themunderstand?"

"Anyhow, we must make them understand."

I think we said these things with a vague half hope the Selenites mightsomehow understand. I knew quite clearly that all that was needed was anexplanation. Then as I saw their faces, I realised that an explanation wasimpossible. Just here it was that our resemblances were not going tobridge our differences. Well, I wasn't going to walk the plank, anyhow. Islipped my wrist very quickly out of the coil of chain that was loose, andthen began to twist my wrists in opposite directions. I was standingnearest to the bridge, and as I did this two of the Selenites laid hold ofme, and pulled me gently towards it.

I shook my head violently. "No go," I said, "no use. You don'tunderstand."

Another Selenite added his compulsion. I was forced to step forward.

"I've got an idea," said Cavor; but I knew his ideas.

"Look here!" I exclaimed to the Selenites. "Steady on! It's all very wellfor you - "

I sprang round upon my heel. I burst out into curses. For one of the armedSelenites had stabbed me behind with his goad.

I wrenched my wrists free from the little tentacles that held them. Iturned on the goad-bearer. "Confound you! " I cried. "I've warned you ofthat. What on earth do you think I'm made of, to stick that into me? Ifyou touch me again - "

By way of answer he pricked me forthwith.

I heard Cavor's voice in alarm and entreaty. Even then I think he wantedto compromise with these creatures. "I say, Bedford," he cried, "I know away! " But the sting of that second stab seemed to set free some pent-upreserve of energy in my being. Instantly the link of the wrist-chainsnapped, and with it snapped all considerations that had held usunresisting in the hands of these moon creatures. For that second, atleast, I was mad with fear and anger. I took no thought of consequences.I hit straight out at the face of the thing with the goad. The chain wastwisted round my fist.

There came another of these beastly surprises of which the moon world isfull.

My mailed hand seemed to go clean through him. He smashed like - likesome softish sort of sweet with liquid in it! He broke right in! Hesquelched and splashed. It was like hitting a damp toadstool. The flimsybody went spinning a dozen yards, and fell with a flabby impact. I wasastonished. I was incredulous that any living thing could be so flimsy.For an instant I could have believed the whole thing a dream.

Then it had become real and imminent again. Neither Cavor nor the otherSelenites seemed to have done anything from the time when I had turnedabout to the time when the dead Selenite hit the ground. Every one stoodback from us two, every one alert. That arrest seemed to last at least asecond after the Selenite was down. Every one must have been taking thething in. I seem to remember myself standing with my arm half retracted,trying also to take it in. "What next?" clamoured my brain; "what next?"Then in a moment every one was moving!

I perceived we must get our chains loose, and that before we could do thisthese Selenites had to be beaten off. I faced towards the group of thethree goad-bearers. Instantly one threw his goad at me. It swished overmy head, and I suppose went flying into the abyss behind.

I leaped right at him with all my might as the goad flew over me. Heturned to run as I jumped, and I bore him to the ground, came down rightupon him, and slipped upon his smashed body and fell. He seemed to wriggleunder my foot.

I came into a sitting position, and on every hand the blue backs of theSelenites were receding into the darkness. I bent a link by main force anduntwisted the chain that had hampered me about the ankles, and sprang tomy feet, with the chain in my hand. Another goad, flung javelin-wise,whistled by me, and I made a rush towards the darkness out of which it hadcome. Then I turned back towards Cavor, who was still standing in thelight of the rivulet near the gulf convulsively busy with his wrists, andat the same time jabbering nonsense about his idea.

"Come on! " I cried.

"My hands! " he answered.

Then, realising that I dared not run back to him, because myill-calculated steps might carry me over the edge, he came shufflingtowards me, with his hands held out before him.

I dropped on my knees and fell to work on his ankle bonds. Whack camesomething - I know not what - and splashed the livid streamlet into dropsabout us. Far away on our right a piping and whistling began.

I whipped the chain off his feet, and put it in his hand. "Hit with that!" I said, and without waiting for an answer, set off in big bounds alongthe path by which we had come. I had a nasty sort of feeling that thesethings could jump out of the darkness on to my back. I heard the impact ofhis leaps come following after me.

We ran in vast strides. But that running, you must understand, was analtogether different thing from any running on earth. On earth one leapsand almost instantly hits the ground again, but on the moon, because ofits weaker pull, one shot through the air for several seconds before onecame to earth. In spite of our violent hurry this gave an effect of longpauses, pauses in which one might have counted seven or eight. "Step,"and one soared off! All sorts of questions ran through my mind: "Where arethe Selenites? What will they do? Shall we ever get to that tunnel? IsCavor far behind? Are they likely to cut him off?" Then whack, stride, andoff again for another step.

I saw a Selenite running in front of me, his legs going exactly as a man'swould go on earth, saw him glance over his shoulder, and heard him shriekas he ran aside out of my way into the darkness. He was, I I think, ourguide, but I am not sure. Then in another vast stride the walls of rockhad come into view on either hand, and in two more strides I was in thetunnel, and tempering my pace to its low roof. I went on to a bend, thenstopped and turned back, and plug, plug, plug, Cavor came into view,splashing into the stream of blue light at every stride, and grew largerand blundered into me. We stood clutching each other. For a moment, atleast, we had shaken off our captors and were alone.

We were both very much out of breath. We spoke In panting, brokensentences.